American Horror Story: Season 2 location revealed

THE second season of American Horror Story will be set in an institution for the criminally insane on America’s East Coast.

Series creator Ryan Murphy revealed the new location while speaking at a panel promoting the series at the TV Academy in North Hollywood.

It means the sophomore season will live up to his promise of ringing the changes, with an all-new set of leading characters and the return of past favourites in different guises.

Jessica Lange, for instance, will return but as the head of the institution. There will also be new roles for Zachary Quinto, Evan Peters, Sarah Paulson and Lily Rabe, although they’ll be playing the opposite of the characters they embodied in the first year of the FX series.

Elaborating further, Murphy said that he had dropped a hint about the new direction of the second season during the first season’s Birth episode, adding that the hint was “something that Sarah Paulson’s character, Billie Dean, says to Jessica and Taisa as she’s sage-ing the house and talking about places where evil collects: We talk about institutions and prisons and things like that. That was the clue”.

The second season will also be set in a new era, according to Murphy, who expanded. “It’s a completely different world and has nothing to do with Season 1; there’s not a mention of Season 1. The second season is set in a completely different time period.”

Finally, he turned his attention to incoming cast member Adam Levine, saying: “He’s a sexy guy so he needs to play a sexy guy, but the guy that is different than who you think he would play.

“I pitched him the part and he listened, slack jawed, and simply said, ‘I’m in.’ The second season is fun, sexy and baroque. It has a lot of meat to it; it’s a really gritty part. He’s with a girl and they play characters called The Lovers.”